Importance of Ethics

Importance of Ethics

Many times, I am often asked what the importance is of ethics. That is a very broad question that is almost uncomfortable to answer. Ethics is a really important and hot topic in today’s world due to the growth of “PC” culture. The fact is however, ethics has always been important. Ethics when boiled down to its most basic origination, is an individual’s judgement about right and wrong within their own morals. Individually, ethics is a key point about what makes you who you are as a person, and from the culture you grew up with and the surrounding influences you had growing up, this often changed and moulded what your ethics has become as a person. A right decision to you could be the wrong decision to someone else, and vice versa. The fact is, it is just about judgement for yourself. What is even more impressive about ethics as a whole is that it changes when you are in a group. A level of peer pressure and clashing personalities can mean that what you consider good may change when you are influenced in a group of 10+ people. Others can be what you consider more ethically “strong”, meaning that they do not succumb to such peer pressure and allow their views and judgement to be resolute. Either way it is incredibly interesting to note the changes in one’s decision making process when an influence is helping craft that decision.

When looking at the broader outcomes of such ethical decisions, it is almost like a butterfly effect. Since even the smallest decisions can make such long lasting impacts throughout the years, ethics plays a large part in the history of mankind and the world. Decisions made hundreds and even thousands of years ago have shaped what the world has become today, making ethics one of the biggest impacts in social culture imaginable. When considering small things like how much someone paid for a small loaf of bread thousands of years ago and the changes that could have made to the world to this very day, it is shocking how little ethics has been taken into consideration within history. When looking at bigger events like invasions of countries or the world at war and how much that has made an impact, it becomes shockingly clear that as a race, humans have always been at the will of the ethics of decision makers within the world.

To this day ethics are clear in the business world. There are entire corporate cultures which have been shaped by the ethics of the companies controlling members and entities, which have made many huge impacts around the world. When looking at housing crises throughout the years and the decisions made by big businesses buying out smaller businesses, or even just company mergers in a large degree, it has shaped the world economy and the lives of millions, if not billions around the world. Many countries such as the ones in Africa would not be suffering the way it is today if decisions were made differently in the past, and one could even think that if the ethics of decision makers in the past were different, those same cultures would now be thriving instead of surviving. One of the more important things this blog will be discussing further down the line are the decisions that were made in the past and how they could have shaped the world differently than it is today.

These are all reasons why when I think about ethics, I think about how it is the most important thing a human can have. Ethics have always shaped the world, and they are also the reason you are the person you are today. The decisions made by those in the past have influenced every action you have ever made, and to an extent they have controlled or impacted every decision you have ever made too. It is likely if it wasn’t for ethics, you would not be in the exact position you are today, or the person that you are.